Years ago, when Warren’s Barbershop was located in the Snowden River Shopping Center, David Clark walked into the shop. He was new to the area and working as a door-to-door salesman.

Shop owner Julius Warren Jr., commonly known as Mr. Julius, asked Clark if he knew how to cut hair. Clark had cut hair a little in college, but nothing too extensive. Still, Mr. Julius brought him under his wing.

“Mr. Julius gave me my first start,” Clark said. “He said, ‘Bring one of your family members in or a friend, and show me how you cut hair.’”

The rest just fell into place. Clark cut hair full-time at Warren’s Barbershop for about eight years before branching off into other entrepreneurial opportunities, such as real estate and local businesses.

Now, the 47-year-old Clark co-owns the shop with Warren’s son, Julius Warren III.

Warren’s Barbershop has been a fixture in the Black community, first in Baltimore and then in Howard County, for a century. A family-owned business, passed down through three generations, it’s always been locally owned and is believed to be the county’s first Black-owned barbershop. But that’s not the only legacy.

Warren Jr., now 86, mentored many young Black men as they got their start cutting hair under him.

Mr. Julius taught Clark and countless others about entrepreneurial spirit and ambition. Some opened their own barbershops while others went on to other careers.

Owners of other Howard County barbershops, such as Prestige Barbers and Web Barber, “they all started with Mr. Julius,” Clark said.

Classic ’90s hip-hop filled the shop, where posters of Muhammad Ali and former President Barack Obama hang on the walls.

“One of the reasons I came back to barbering [was] in order to really keep the legacy going,” Clark said. “The barbers come from the legacy of Warren’s Barbershop on Pennsylvania Avenue,” in Baltimore.

As Mr. Julius has dealt with medical issues, Clark has been helping with his care, including bringing fried chicken from Royal Farms to Mr. Julius at a nursing and rehab center in Elkridge.

Travis Hamilton started cutting hair when he was only 13 years old. Hamilton was working at a beauty salon when Mr. Julius invited him to join his shop. Now 51, Hamilton has cut hair at Warren’s Barbershop for nearly three decades.

“I have clients that I’ve had for over 30-plus years,” said Hamilton. “They don’t want to go anywhere else. It’s not that they can’t, they don’t want to.”

Hamilton also cuts women’s hair. On a recent weekday, two older women walked in to scout out the shop to see if they should bring their kids for haircuts.

“It was like I was sitting here talking to my aunties,” Hamilton said. “I mean, the haircut would normally take 15 or 20 minutes, and they were here for almost an hour.”

By the end, they all hugged one another as if they were old friends. They talked about the challenges of raising kids, relationships, how school is going, what’s going at home.

“It’s like a family reunion. That’s the feeling you get when you walk in here,” Hamilton said.

In some ways, it truly is a family reunion. Like his father, Warren III started cutting hair when he was a teenager. There was never a question he would join the family business.

Warren III, who creates tattoos, said cutting hair is “a different part of art for me.”

Warren’s Barbershop was opened by Mr. Julius’ father, Julius Warren Sr., in Baltimore in 1924.

Warren Sr. had begun cutting hair when he was working as a carpenter in South Carolina. He built barns during the day and cut Black people’s hair at night. When carpentry jobs dried up in South Carolina, Warren Sr. made his way to Baltimore, finding work at the port. After getting in trouble with his white supervisor for using a crane at work, Warren Sr. walked off the job and picked up his clippers again.

At the age of 18, he opened a four-chair barbershop on Baltimore’s Pennsylvania Avenue. After purchasing a home in Howard County in the 1940s, he built a barbershop in his home and closed the Baltimore location.

His son, Mr. Julius, joined the family business when he was 13. That’s when his father handed him his first pair of clippers.

He went to Morgan State University for one semester, but left so he could keep earning money at the barbershop. Even in those early days, Mr. Julius was teaching friends how to cut hair.

“Being a barber was one of the best businesses to have back then,” said Mr. Julius, who took over the shop from his father in 1981 and has sometimes dabbled in other businesses.

The barbershop has made several stops around Howard County since the mid-1940s, including in Jessup and Columbia. It finally settled in the Owen Brown Village Center, in East Columbia, in the early 2000s.

While Mr. Julius retired his clippers almost a decade ago, the craft still lives within him.

Warren’s Barbershop remains a community pillar not only because its barbers have been cutting hair for years, but because of how they give back through back-to-school haircuts and other community events. The most recent was the Owen Brown Community Event, which focused on school year success and celebrated Mr. Julius’ legacy.

“For years, this business has been a community staple, helping to make our residents not only look good, but feel good,” said Howard County Executive Calvin Ball, a longtime supporter of the shop.

After a century in business, Warren’s seems poised to remain a place for residents to gather, connect and get a haircut.

“You know, they call the barbershop the Black man’s country club,” Clark said of the way his shop draws politicians to get a clean cut. “I mean, you name it, they came through Warren’s Barbershop.”